More waiting….

Well, it troubled my day and vexed my night, that question of mine. So I asked Mr. Fernández at the dinner table.

“Where are the readers? I wrote a post today and left myself stranded on the side of the road, waiting for a público that might never come. And then I sat down with my cell phone in hand, expecting the calls of concern to come flooding in. And guess what! Not one! Nobody, but nobody, called.”

Mr. Fernández was patient, he frequently is. He explained that readers—more intelligent than I—would assume that if I were posting blogs (or blogging posts, don’t know which), I must have found my way to safety, or at least Wi-Fi.

Oh.

Well, the Remeron may not fully have kicked in. Or maybe it was just remembered dread. Let me explain. Getting off the island of Culebra was a breeze. For 2.75$ I got a ferry ticket, and sat in wonderful comfort and watched the ocean drift by. Culebra does that to you—puts you in such an alpha state that whitecaps become compellingly interesting.

Landing in Fajardo smashed all that!

Here’s the deal. The públicos are supposed to be just that—public. They’re not taxis, which are private. However, there are no taxis—just públicos. So guess what! There were all these públicos and about six of us who were not parked 500 hundred feet away. Right—six of us, five of whom saw the logic of paying ten dollars for a now-non-public público for a private ride to wherever they were going.

Guess who didn’t see that logic! And who, in the blazing heat of Fajardo Playa, forgot the words he had written: “arguing with a chofer is like arguing with a cat.”

Well, I was rescued, as I always am, by an old man who took pity on a ridiculous man and told me he would take me wherever…

…free!

The universe provides—though on its own timeframe.  

So I was sitting in comfort and listening to two other gringos practicing their Spanish and then I turned and saw it—a público marked Farjado to Río Piedras! Just what I wanted, I told my driver / friend / rescuer. 

No, that was Indio, and he’s going home for the day.

But then he saw another público. And that was the one for me.

But it was just going to Río Grande.

And that, Intelligent Readers, is how I came to be stuck in Big River.

Waiting on Highway 3—well, beside Highway 3—for a público that might never come.

Fortunately, I had company. The guy had lived in New Jersey for nine years and loved it. It was clean! It was orderly! You had a broken light on your car? Well, get ready, ‘cause the first cop you meet is gonna pull you over, take your license, and you’ll be at the station, next day, with your car repaired and your license back in your wallet! But here! Look at that car!

OK, it was more duct tape than car, but the guy driving it?

Wow!

And what about the status issue! Do you think this referendum is going to settle that? What do you think!

Puerto Rican readers will know, and will have tensed. Others won’t. Here it is: a group of Puerto Ricans favor statehood, a group favors independence, a group favors something called the Free Associated State, our current status.

This had puzzled me, those twenty years ago when I came unSpanished (I see you, you little red squiggly line, but I like it, it stays!) to the island. But even I could figure out Estado Libre Asociado.

But what did it mean?

“IT’S A LIE, A VICIOUS LIE!” screamed Mr. Fernández over the dinner table. I became alarmed—I had never seen him violent before. I removed trajectables (sorry, computer!) from reach.

Then I figured it out. The status issue had to be somewhere close-by.

“You’re a cultural genocidalist,” said Harry’s father to me, years ago. “It’s nothing personal. But your country has practiced genocide on my country. You therefore are responsible. And though I have nothing against you, I have to tell you that you are personally and individually responsible for the great wrong that has been done to my country.”

He was quite calm, but it seemed best to agree.

And he taught me a great lesson, which I—added value, as we used to say in Wal-Mart—will now teach you.

You are paying attention, right?

Never talk status.

The trick is to inquire what your interlocutor thinks, and then nod your head, appear thoughtful, and agree.

Were I in a classroom, I would have you practicing—it’s conversation / conversación 101.

Right, wow, good point / claro, estoy de acuerdo; muy buen punto.

“The whole thing is ridiculous,” my buddy of the bus stop was saying. Look around you—Walgreens, Sears, Wal-Mart! Statehood is already here!”

And then, we spotted the público. Instantly, we dropped the question and stood jumping by the road and flailing our arms—they were still sore the next day.

But relax, gentle reader. It slowed, we opened the door, we plunged our bodies through to our seats.

You can sleep easily tonight—I was rescued.

When Sugar Was King

It was a flash moment, but all the more potent for that. I was looking for the oldest guy in town.

OK—it wasn’t a bar, and I wasn’t buying him his cigarettes and beer. But the process was pretty much the same.

“Yo busco a Chan,” I said to the three guys lounging on the boardwalk.

“Pa’ matarlo?” returned one. To kill him?

I must have passed, because they led me to him.

Guess it’s in the genes. My eye had been drawn to two large decaying towers. Gotta be sugar cane, I thought. But most of the chimneys I’ve seen were taller and thinner. So I asked a guy, who in turn asked me for a buck for a flask of wine. Helps him get through the day….

That’s how I got to Chan….

Who was a nice guy, gave me a seat in front of his fish shop, and told me the story of the area. Seems the area—Fajardo Playa—was originally mangrove swamp, “rescued” by his grandparent’s generation. It came there because there was work—a limestone (cal) mine on the nearby island of Icacos. The limestone came by ship, was packed and sent to the hardware stores around the island. In fact, they built a special pier just for the limestone. Called muelle de cal—limestone pier—it was nicknamed muelle de lambeojos—brownnose pier.

Now all the limestone comes from Mexico.

And it was Icacos limestone that was used to build the two towers that—yup—were for refining sugar. Called a central—it got the sugarcane from a valley behind a mountain that the wine-seeker pointed out in the distance. Came by rail—a special train used just for transporting the cane.

OK—knew about that. There’s a famous one down south somewhere. Well, the Central started up in the early 20^th century. Closed down in the mid 70’s. The sugar cane would come, be processed, then transported in sacks by ships to a larger ship anchored at sea. Harbor in Fajardo Playa wasn’t deep enough.

And local guys would work the ships—standing on one and heaving sacks of sugar to go to the other ship.

Hard work, and Chan said the guys had muscles for days. Still do. There are two of them surviving, and they’re both sharp as machetes, mentally. One of ‘em is 95.

Well, the Central closed down in 1977. It had been the biggest employer in town for decade. But it was cheaper for the gringos to bring it in half a world away. So what to do? Well, a lot of the guys turned to the sea. Took to fishing, which is also a hard life. Hour after hour under the sun, and indeed it’s hot here, in this corner of the island. And they could go for a couple of days without catching anything.

So the kids in town? Where are they working? 

Answer—elsewhere or they’re not. In 1997, the unemployment rate was 22-25%. And that was the nineties—good years, good times. Now? Curiously, it’s lower. Just 19%, the highest in Puerto Rico. The census tells the story—4000 people left town in the first decade of the 21^st century.

Most of the local businesses have closed. On the outskirts of town, there are the malls, the chain stores. Puerto Rico’s most expensive hotel, El Conquistador, sits rather smugly on a nearby mountaintop. Designed to face the sea, it also turns its back on the town.

And yes, two pharmaceuticals—the backbone of the 1950’s Bootstrap miracle—still remain. Estamos sobrevivendo por la misericordia de Dios. We’re holding on by the mercy of God, said Chan. Times are bad.

And Chan has about 20 fishermen who supply him with the red snapper, conch (when it was legal), and lobster he sells.

Well, Chan had given me half an hour of his time, and the name of a book—El Grito de Silencio, The Shout of Silence—which would tell me the story of the Central. So I gave him my hand, thanked him for his time, and for the information. We’d passed half an hour chatting and looking out over the sea, remembering or learning the old days, when guys had jobs and produced stuff, instead of lingering in bars or flipping hamburgers.

Memories are selective and often defective. But nothing about Fajardo Playa, today, spoke of good times.